How To Dual Boot Linux Mint And Windows 10 [Beginner’s Guide]

Brief: This guide shows you how to dual boot Linux Mint with Windows 10 and enjoy both Linux and Windows together in one system.

So you have decided to switch to Linux. Good decision! And if you chose to use Linux Mint, that’s even a better decision.

Linux Mint is one of the best Linux distributions for beginners. Using Linux Mint is fairly easy and installing Linux Mint is no rocket science either. In this tutorial, we’ll see how to install Linux Mint along side Windows 10.

Before that let me recap you a few things about installing Linux Mint. There are a few ways you can start using any Linux based operating system.

Use Linux inside Windows in a virtual machine: This runs a Linux OS like any other application within Windows. This is also one of the safest ways to get a feel of Linux. However, this will utilize your system resources and if you have less than 4Gb of RAM, I won’t advise using it extensively.

Use a live version of Linux: In this method, you put Linux on a USB or DVD and you boot from it. This is usually slow and your changes done to the Linux system are (normally) not saved. This is particularly useful if you just want to see what Linux feels like.

Remove WIndows and Linux: If you have backed up your data and have a recovery or installation disk of Windows ready with you or if you are determined that you are not going back to Windows, you can remove Windows completely and use only Linux.

Install Linux alongside Windows: This method is called dual booting Linux with Windows. Here, you install Linux on a system that already has Windows. And when your system powers up, you can choose if you want to use Windows or Linux. This involves touching the disk partition and sometimes boot order. Absolute beginners often find it complicated but this is the best way to use Linux and Windows together in one system. And in this article, we’ll see how to dual boot Linux Mint with Windows 10.

Dual Boot allows you to select between using Windows and Linux at boot time

Will dual booting Linux with Windows slow down your system?

I was asked this question several times in the Linux Users Group. So, the short answer is no. Dual booting Linux and Windows won’t slow your system in any way.

The only delay is in boot time that too because you get 10 seconds of buffer time to select between Linux and Windows. Once you have booted into either of Linux or Windows, it will work the same as if it is the only OS in the system. No impact on the usability of your system. Dual boot won’t slow down your system.

Install Linux Mint in dual boot with Windows:

Before we proceed to see the procedure to dual boot Linux Mint with Windows, let me give you some optional yet recommended safety instructions:

Back up your data: You are going to touch disk partitions. Normally, it’s not a big issue but just in case if you touched wrong partition etc, you may lose data. So my advice is to back up your important files, documents, music, movies etc to an external disk or cloud, whichever suits you.

Have a boot repair disk: If your boot gets messed up, you can try to repair it with boot repair disk. If you have an extra USB or CD, you can use that to create boot repair disk.

Have a live or recovery disk of Windows ready: If your boot gets messed up and despite all efforts, you ended with an unbootable system, you can use the Windows disk to reinstall Windows.

I am not discouraging you. I am asking you to be prepared for the worst case scenario.

Remember that this article applies to computers that have Windows 10 already installed on the system. You are installing Linux Mint on an already installed Windows system, not the other way round.

I have created a detailed video tutorial on installing Linux Mint alongside Windows 10. You can refer to it if you want to see all the steps in even more details. I also advise you to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Linux tutorials.

Follow the steps below to install Linux Mint in dual boot with Windows:

Step 1: Create a live USB or disk

Go to Linux Mint website and download ISO file. This ISO file is the disk image that you can burn to a USB or DVD.

Step 2: Make a new partition for Linux Mint

This is where you have to be cautious. If you have multiple partitions (not the recovery ones), you can either use one of them or create a new partition from an existing partition. Your existing data will be safe if you have enough free space. Typically, you install Linux in under 10 Gb, however, if disk space if not a concern, I advise using 30-40Gb at least. This way you can have more space at your disposal for downloading and keeping various files.

In Windows 10, go to start menu and type ‘partition’. This will bring up Disk Management utility. Now carefully select the disk in which you’ll make some free space by shrinking the volume:

In my case, I only had the C Drive with 223Gb of space on it. So I shrunk it to make 110Gb of free partition on it. I recommend watch the video to see the exact steps you need more hint.

Step 3: Boot in to live USB

Plug the live USB or disk into the computer and restart the computer. While booting the computer press F10 or F12 function key (defers from computer to computer) to go to the boot menu. Now, choose the option to boot from USB or Removable Media.

Important Note: If your computer came with Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 and you upgraded your system to Windows 10, you may have to disable secure boot. Most modern system with Windows 10 should not need this step, especially with Linux Mint or Ubuntu.

Step 4: Start the installation

It takes some time to boot from the live USB or disk. Have some patience. Once it boots in to live disk, you’ll be provided to Try Linux Mint or Install Linux Mint. Even if you choose to try it, you can find the install option on the desktop:

In next few screens, you’ll be asked to choose the language of the operating system. It will then do some checks on available space, battery and Internet connection.

Step 5: Prepare the partition

This is the most important part of the whole installation. Where to install Linux Mint? As mentioned before, I prefer separate partitions for Windows and Linux. Windows is already installed here, we’ll prepare a new partition for Linux Mint. In the Installation Type window, choose Something Else:

Step 6: Create root, swap and home

Since you already created a new partition in Windows, it’s time to install Linux Mint on it. Now, there are several ways to do it. But here, I’ll show you my favorite way and that is to have a Root, a Swap and a Home.

Create a root partition first. Choose the free space available and click on +.

Here, choose the size of the root (10 GB is enough but I chose to have 20 here), choose ext4 file system, and mount point as / (i.e. root):

Now, next is to create the swap partition. Now the question is what should be the swap size for Linux Mint installation?

The answer depends upon your RAM size, your needs, available disk space and whether you would use hibernation or not. You can use the below suggestion:

RAM less than 2 GB: Swap should be double the size of RAM

RAM between 2 to 4 GB: Swap should be RAM size + 2 GB

RAM between 6 GB to 8 GB: Swap should be size of RAM

RAM more than 8 GB: Swap should be half the size of RAM or less

Don’t spend too much time thinking about swap. It is helpful for systems with less memory. For system with more than 8 GB of RAM and SSD, the less the swap, the better it is.

The next step is to create Home. Try to allocate the maximum size to Home because this is where you’ll be downloading and keeping the files.

Once you have created Root, Swap and Home partitions, click on Install Now button.

Step 7: Follow the trivial instructions

Technically, you have crossed the main hurdle if you reached this point successfully. Now you will be taken through a number of screens to select options like keyboard layout, login credentials etc. You don’t need to be a genius to figure out what to do here afterward. I have attached screenshots for reference purpose here.

Once the installation is over, you will be presented with the option to keep trying live version or to restart the system.

And that would be it. On next boot, you will see the option of Linux Mint on the grub screen. And thus you can enjoy the beautiful and beginner-friendly Linux distribution. I hope you found this guide to Linux Mint dual boot with Windows helpful.

Here are a few common troubleshoot you might have to do after dual booting Linux Mint:

About Abhishek Prakash

I am a professional software developer, and founder of It's FOSS. I am an avid Linux lover and open source enthusiast. I use Ubuntu and believe in sharing knowledge. Apart from Linux, I love classic detective mysteries. I'm a huge fan of Agatha Christie's work.

Hello. I followed your tutorial but it seems that I messed something up. While installing Linux, on the part where you chose where to install it on (the partition you made from you C: drive), it tell me my partition is “unusable” although I did exactly what you did in the video. Please help ASAP. Thank you very much.

Great tutorial! I’m having an issue and was hoping you or anyone else would be able to help me.

I’m a total noob with Linux by the way. I followed this tutorial from the beginning and am having an issue at step 6.

Firstly, I’m having freezing issues while running LM from my USB stick. I have to force shut down frequently. I did turn off Secure Boot. I can then play around with LM. However, it freezes when I want to shut down. So I force shut down. Not sure what the issue could be. Do you know what the issue might be?

During installation, at the ‘installation type’ screen, no devices are shown. It’s just blank. “Device for bootloader installation” shows ‘/dev/sda’. And when I click a button on this screen I get the error: “No root file system is defined. Please correct this from the partitioning menu.” What seems to be the problem here?

Modern Laptops and their UEFI BIOSes are a real pain in the ass. I installed LInux Mint 19.2 on a test hdd (thanks god) on my ASUS Vivobook 17 with BIOS 304. Now I cannot get any live boot usb stick with Windows installation on it into boot mode. It simply ignores the stick, whatever I do. I tried 7 (!) different USB live tools now, all with the same result.
Could you cover this theme in a future guide or tutorial?
Or is there anything I can use to solve this problem?

I did it anyway. If my bios would have a legacy mode I would be happy. Thats why modern Bioses ARE a pain in the ass. They make things more complicated than ever and do help infringe your personal digital rights even further. I even managed to install Win 10 AFTER Linux Mint and restored Grub with a Linux Boot Repair USB.

Have just been following your directions and I come across a problem – firstly I couldn’t partition my C: drive (SSD) so partitioned the D: drive (a fixed HD) instead for Linux as instructed. But now I’ve done the reboot and tried to install I get this: “Force UEFI Installation?” “This machine’s firmware has started the installer in UEFI mode but it looks like there may be existing operating systems already installed using BIOS compatibility mode. If you continue to install Debian in UEFI mode, it might be difficult to reboot the machine into any BIOS-mode operating systems later. If you wish to install in UEFI mode and don’t care about keeping the ability to boot one of the existing systems, you have the option to force that here. If you wish to keep the option to boot an existing operating system, you should choose NOT to force UEFI installation here.” Buttons: Go Back & Continue in UEFI mode.

Frankly since I don’t really understand the implications of continuing with this I am abandoning the install… if you have any advice I’d appreciate it. Rather disappointed I have to say – it looks so easy otherwise.